Dexter Forum September 3 Retrospective

It’s not really fall but it is September and it was a beautiful fall day and a holiday weekend and the beginning of the college football season and still you came to talk about ‘issues of concern’ and truth be told there weren’t too many. Sean Dalton from We Love Dexter was in attendance with his little recorder running so everyone was on their best behavior.

Bill Gordon sat in for Karl Fink and started us off by reading some criticism about the most incompetent, dysfunctional president ever elected. It turns out that he was reading from a biography about Harry Truman. We rarely stray into national politics so we just accepted this as Bill’s way being friendly.

Jan Marble wanted to know what is happening to the farm on Strawberry Lake Road that used to belong to the owner of Carl’s Chop House. Nobody knew so this will be question on next week’s quiz.

Mark O(A)lexa brought us up to date on the myriad of hiking/biking trails in the area. The dream that was once the border-to-border trail is becoming a very popular reality.

Al Ruhlig talked about the complications caused by the 42 in gas pipeline running across his farm. Al is remarkably calm about this intrusion and seems more concerned about the environmental damage caused by the excavation activities.

We looked ahead to the November election and noted that there will only be four more sessions of the Forum before that event. There are five candidates for three Dexter city council seats, the mayor is running unopposed, the county will be seeking a tax increase for public safety/mental health services, Webster township will be asking for a tax increase for public safety and we just heard today that The Washtenaw Intermediate School District will have an issue as well. We will have the stump ready for candidates and folks wishing to make persuasive presentations regarding the ballot propositions.

Mona Walz reminded us that the abuse of opioids/heroin now accounts for as many deaths each month as were incurred in the terrorist attacks on 9-11. The 9-11 attacks produced major changes in public policy but the response to the drug issue has been less focused and less intense even though it is arguably a much bigger issue.

Paul Cousins mentioned reporting that shows that Dexter is the 9th richest school district (measured by household income) in the state. That is 9th out of over 500 local school districts. We are even ahead of Ann Arbor.

Elmo (of Ping Ping fame) noted the symmetry in Al’s 97th birthday and Paul’s 79th and found that sufficient reason to sing. So we ended our meeting singing happy birthday.

Go Blue. Go Green. (We are not playing each other yet.)

The next meeting of the Dexter Forum will be on Saturday, September 16 at 8:30 AM at the Dexter Wellness Center on Baker Road.